Holistic Therapies and my growing interest and experience in this field

 

There are a number of Holistic Therapies, which are natural treatments for the body, mind, spirit and emotions – holistic therapy simply refers to treating the person as a whole as opposed to their individual symptoms.

More people are now looking for more natural ways of self-care, relaxation, stress relief and overall wellbeing. Some also use holistic treatments alongside conventional medical treatment by way of a complementary therapy and many people have regular holistic treatments as a way of preventing illness and bringing natural balance and harmony into their lifestyle.

Holistic therapy is also effective in addressing those concerns that many of us have these days, from muscular aches and pains to headaches, to improved sleep and mental clarity.

It is also a GREAT way to just take some time out, relax, get off the “treadmill of life” for an hour or so and just BE. It really should be on everyone’s regular Self Care list  and not something we do now and again.

Below is how my journey started and evolved. There are individual pages for each therapy/treatment (Facial Skincare/Facial Massage, Reiki, Massage inc pregnancy/baby) outlining what the benefits of them are and details of treatments offered.

My journey into holistic therapy

Reiki – see my Reiki page for more information on what it is and the benefits of it.

I had stumbled across Reiki many years ago in Ireland when I was on holiday around 2003. I was on a visit seeing my cousin and his wife she was talking about giving reiki to the cows on their farm and how they were saving on vets bills. I had no idea what reiki was so she told me a bit about it I was fascinated by it so much that on returning home I was telling my colleagues about it – and one of them had a friend who was a Reiki Master. It was arranged for myself and two colleagues to have a Reiki training session at my home and that’s when my reiki journey started.

Once I trained in Reiki, I used it on friends and family on and off for many years. My life – like many peoples – was busy with working full time (at one point I was working 7 days a week), being a single mum, keeping fit, keeping in contact with family and friends…….and all the things we do day to day that keeps us busy. So even when giving reiki treatments fell to the wayside, I still practiced on myself and my son and always felt it was somehow part of me.

As years went by, I got to a point where I wanted to reconnect with reiki and went on further courses and began doing more treatments, again for family and friends.

I always wanted to volunteer my time for cancer patients – I had this desire from when I met my first Reiki master who used to volunteer a lot of her time to cancer patients and I wanted to do that same. I held that thought for many years and in the latter part of 2019, I started volunteering one day a week at a well renowned London Hospital in the day unit for cancer patients. I would give reiki or massage treatments to patients, often working around them as they received their chemotherapy. It was an amazing and rewarding experience for the time I was involved. However as we know, COVID-19 arrived in the early part of 2020 and the therapy services were quickly cancelled. I was however able to do distant reiki for some time on that outpatients who requested it. More information about distant reiki can be found on the Reiki page

Facial massage/facial skincare/Natural Facelift/Gua Sha

I started using, and then later on selling, Tropic skincare products – see my page here for Skincare information

I wanted to build a business that was more than selling products and so I decided to take a facial massage/skincare course which I loved and I then started to slowly build a business in my spare time giving facial treatments using the products I use. Besides seeing those clients leave with an amazing glow to their face, I could see other benefits to this such as they felt more relaxed, less stressed and very happy that they felt so much better after a facial. I wanted to introduce Reiki into the facial treatments and the ideal time during this treatment is when a face mask is on – so I started asking clients if they would like to try Reiki around their head/face at that point of the treatment. They took this opportunity to try reiki and they LOVE it.

They found it gave them an even more relaxing treatment – with some of them falling asleep. I now ask all clients if they want reiki included with their facial treatment.

I have since done further courses on facial massage including Natural Face Lift which uses Japanese and Indian techniques.

At the time of writing this (Feb 2021), I will be learning more about Facial Reflexolgy and Gua Sha for the face and will bring those into my facial treatments as they have amazing healing benefits and help your skin glow even more.

Holistic Massage and Aromatherpy

Following on from my facial skincare/facial massage course, I had an interest to learn more about Anatomy and Physiology (A&P) of the body as I only needed to learn the head and shoulder area on my facial course.

I therefore decided to look into A&P and massage with a view to also learning more about Aromatherapy – and so embarked on a new journey learning A&P, Holistic Massage and Aromatherapy Massage which I qualified in.

As part of my course I had to work with a number of volunteers and give treatments to them – some on a longer term basis than others. I loved the aromatherapy side of massage and could see immediate results with creating blends of essential oils tailored for each persons needs on that day.

I have since also trained in Pregnancy and Baby massage